JonathanPerregaux

Better still, let me click on a part from the toolbox and filter craft that use that part. I have enough ships now that I'm losing track of which ones have landing legs, wheels, chutes, probe cores, whatever.

These lights are great, and I tend to be picky about mods. One kinda funny thing I noticed was that the rotating searchlight can illuminate a huge swath on a planet's surface from thousands of kilometers away... which got me thinking about a new orbital agriculture invention I will soon be patenting. As soon as I can alter the laws of physics, I'll be putting out a product that will feed the world. Also, due to KSP's cut-rate light rendering, it did all this from inside a closed clamshell. Which I find charming, actually.

I recently did something very stupid. I built this whole, giant lander with ore-processing abilities. Mounted it to Near Future's new, bigger lifter parts. Got the whole thing flying and landing beautifully. Added a satellite to the tip, enclosed in an aeroshell, to separate later and scan for ore in a polar orbit. Propelled by ion engines with sufficient xenon, battery, solar panel EC generation, with a transmitter dish and even RCS blocks so I can dock it back to the mother ship and venture to another planetary body with a fresh supply of liquid fuel and oxidizer. I got all the way to Duna orbit, smugly separated my satellite, deployed the scanner, hit the ion engines and... click. Click. Oh, dear. THEY'RE BACKWARD! Only an overgrown mop-head like you would be stupid enough to...

I love self-illumination. Nearly all my ships have at least one light somewhere. I have wanted more choices such as these because who doesn't want a disco space shuttle UFO?

I've noticed that for several versions now, Auto Warp requires me to initiate time warp by pressing ">" on my keyboard. Once I do this, Auto Warp kicks in and ramps the time warp factor up and down. This used to be totally automatic, to the point where I could press spacebar on the launch pad, go to the bathroom, and come back with my ship in orbit. Some maneuvers still Auto Warp automatically (Landing Guidance, for example), but it seems that most maneuvers require me to start time warp first. Is this change in behavior intended?

Nicely done. And yet another "Why not are you am stock?!" mod.

The best way to stabilize a cat-rocket is to apply butter-side-up slices of bread to the top. That way, the ship will achieve perfect equilibrium. Science!

I want a mobile launch pad that will let me do this:

Here she is, my cat-rocket "CatCo." It flies about as well as an actual cat.

Curious fact: If you could exist in the exact center of the Earth, you would be weightless. Why? Because you would have an equal amount of mass all around you. The gravitational pull of that mass in all directions would cancel out any gravitational "pull" you would experience. The Earth, in free-fall around the sun, is also weightless.

"Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve." —John Archibald Wheeler

Because if the Cosmos didn't suck, it would blow.

Built a cat-shaped rocket with ears, eyes, cheeks, whiskers, legs and a tail and then spent the next few hours attempting to make it fly into space. It did, eventually, get to space. But man, was it was stupid.

I usually build giant rockets that test the limits of being able to fly. Flipping over is an old, annoying friend of mine. Here's what I do to keep him from showing up at my house. Watch your wet center-of-mass. As fuel burns, the COM moves. If you're not careful, though, the remaining fuel mass can pose a problem during your gravity turn, inducing a flip. With heavy lifters stacked on multiple tanks, I change the fuel priority so the lower tanks burn first. This shifts the COM towards the nose quicker than if I let all the tanks empty themselves equally (the default). Be wary of solid rocket boosters, as they have no gimbals. If they are too powerful compared to your liquid-fuel engines, you may lose just enough steering control to flip over. To compensate, I've either reduced the flow rate of the SRBs or added some Mk-55 "Thud" engines to the sides to add more thrust and gimbal. A little drag may help borderline cases. I've solved some flipping problems by ensuring I had adequate tail fins to keep the rear-end planted. Watch out when using non-cylindrical lifting bodies such as the MK2 for rocket fuselages. At speed, lifting forces will throw your rocket back and could flip it. Staging can suddenly drop a lot of mass, briefly throwing your COM into chaos. If your ship is not quite nose-heavy enough, or unstable structurally, it may not be able to survive this transition. Strengthen the ship using autostrut or, if geometries are complex, actual struts. Anything that wobbles won't be fuel-efficient. A wobble that grows into a resonance (especially during Max Q) may flip the rocket if steering overcompensates. I always autostrut each stage's main engine to the root part, unless I have pods sticking out. For outboard engines I usually try autostrut to grandfather part. If the ship twists itself to bits with this, I'll throw actual strut parts on there to hold her steady. Hide non-aerodynamic parts inside fairings if you can. You'd be surprised how much a set of exposed landing legs will cost you on ascent. Pay attention to Max Q (MechJeb is good at this) but be careful not to throttle down too much or you may lose control and flip.

Death by launch clamps relentlessly following me into low orbit, my favorite annoyance.

I burned holes through some bark chips using the sun and my father's telescope with a Barlow lens attached.

I just started using this mod for the first time. It nicely fills in the parts gap for wheels and landing legs. Great job. One thing I'm noticing though is that the L-shaped legs start deployed on the launch pad, even though they are stowed in the VAB. If I press G they will stow themselves, but I have to do this every time. Is this a known bug or something I've somehow messed up?

I played the crap out of the demo. I found the sparse collection of parts perfect, as it allowed me to focus on the basic science of rocketry. I didn't know a periapsis from my posterior, so the demo laid a lot of track in my head. So many myths shattered! So much insight gained! So many exploding things! Once I built a functional sun-skimmer using my new-found skills and knowledge, I bought the full game and went bananas.

Well, I built a gigantic cube out of girders and plates and attempted to fly it. It almost made it through Max Q.

I've had auto-strut twist and demolish larger spacecraft to hilarious effect, so knowing how to use it effectively makes it a non-cheat to me.

Aye! More wee new parts... come to da!

Well, I "only" have 42 things sitting in my GameData folder and it only takes a couple of minutes to get to the title screen from a fresh boot. I have everything on SSD, with 8 gigs of RAM. One thing that definitely helped was "-force-opengl" because it has less aggressive memory demands.

I support this. I use MechJeb's Smart A.S.S. mode or Atmosphere Autopilot to hold a horizon lock. It'sa verra naaaice.

That's a bingo! No more lag spikes. Thank you.

Now all I need is a Near Future VAB that's big enough to easily edit these new monstrosities I've devised.